Welcome to the Green-wood Discovery blog. My name is Jeff Richman and I am the historian at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. Green-Wood is truly a remarkable place: 478 acres of trees, sculpture, ponds, gardens, and grass-covered hills in the heart of urban Brooklyn. It is my privilege to be the historian at Green-Wood … Read more
More from the “if I travel, I can usually find something pertaining to Green-Wood Cemetery” files. On a recent visit to Philadelphia, we headed off towards the Rodin Museum. As I drove, my friend navigated, with a map on her lap. As we arrived near the museum, she asked me, “Who was Henry George?” The … Read more
Early in 1839, Louis Daguerre offered his invention, the Daguerreotype, to the world. That invention was the birth of photography. Daguerre then dispatched his pupil, Francois Jean-Baptiste Gouraud, who was the agent for the manufacturer of equipment endorsed by Daguerre, to America to introduce photography. It was 170 years ago today that Gouraud arrived in … Read more
Nathaniel Currier started his lithography printing company that would be become the famous firm of Currier and Ives (both Currier and Ives are interred, of course, at Green-Wood Cemetery) in the 1830’s, printing letterheads, sheet music, and other routine business items. But, in 1835, Currier headed in a new direction: illustrated news. It was in … Read more
Louis Moreau Gottschalk, America’s first matinee idol and its first internationally acclaimed classical composer/musician, is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery. Here’s Cecile Licad, in 2003, playing Gottschalk’s Manchega. Quite a performance, and on a Steinway piano (the Steinway family owns the largest tomb at Green-Wood, with room for 256 interments: 128 on the ground floor and … Read more
I recently found myself at an Association for Gravestone Studies convention in Schenectady with a few hours of free time, and decided to head over to the New York State Museum in Albany for a visit. Headed in–quite an exhibition on September 11–video of a fireman who lost all of his fellows, a badly damaged … Read more
In 2008, PBS’s Channel 13 featured Green-Wood as part of their The City Concealed series. I had the pleasure of being their guide for the piece. It originally appeared in October 2008 and is also online at Channel 13’s website and Vimeo, listed below. I hope you enjoy it. The City Concealed: Tombs & Catacombs … Read more
Green-Wood’s 478 acres are home to 7000 trees. And, as you may have guessed, those trees produce millions and millions of leaves. For the last few years, it has been the practice at Green-Wood, in the fall, to mow most of those leaves in place as a mulch. But, because that has resulted in a … Read more
A new planting has just gone in on the hill off Oak Avenue, directly in the line of the gaze of the bronze Horace Greeley across the road. Approximately seventy victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 are interred at Green-Wood Cemetery. Several of them, including three firemen from … Read more
Carol Grissom is the senior objects conservator at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute. For thirty years she has studied American and European zinc sculpture. When it comes to zinc sculpture, Carol is the expert. Her book, Zinc Sculpture in America 1850-1959, has just been published. It is the bible on this subject. Have I mentioned … Read more
It has been an unusually warm fall at Green-Wood. Many flowers continue to bloom. Here, a few that are still in their glory. Most of these are in the gardens near our Arches, our front gates. The brownstone retains heat, creating a warmer area for plants. These gardens were planted by Superintendent of the Grounds … Read more
The Green-Wood Historic Fund’s Restoration and Preservation Program is truly cutting edge. No other cemetery in America has as active and as wide-reaching a program. Headed by Frank Morelli, it has rebuilt entire monuments with pieces dug out of the ground or molded as needed. It has restored wings and hands to angels. It has … Read more
It really is hard for me to go anywhere and not find something that’s related to Green-Wood. I just got back from ten days in Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. Really a great time of year to visit those cities–a chance to extend the warm weather a bit before being engulfed in a New York … Read more
Today is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Charlie Ebbets, former owner of the beloved Brooklyn Dodgers. Charlie put his name on Ebbets Field, the legendary home park of the Dodgers that was at Bedford Avenue and Sullivan Place. It opened in 1913. I saw a game there, many years ago. It was torn … Read more
Today was our sixth annual performance of this wonderful site specific performance. Since 2004, Martha Bowers, director of Dance Theatre Etc., has choreographed a dance and music event across Green-Wood’s hills as part of openhousenewyork (a free annual event throughout New York City featuring architecture). Martha does wonders every year, recruiting a cast, tweaking the … Read more
I recently found myself at an Association for Gravestone Studies convention in Schenectady with a few hours of free time, and decided to head over to the New York State Museum in Albany for a visit. Headed in–quite an exhibition on the September 11 attack–video of a fireman who lost all of his fellows, a … Read more
I recently got another e-mail from Bob McAvoy. I’ve never met Bob, but I’ve certainly gotten a lot of e-mails from him. Bob’s passion is Civil War veterans from New Jersey. Sometimes I think that 7 years is a long time for me to have spent so far searching for Civil War soldiers. But then … Read more
During the first weekend of June, I headed off to the Civil War Preservation Trust’s annual convention in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A great organization–saving battlefield land, hallowed ground, holding its yearly event in the mecca of Civil War towns. Brought along my t-shirt–the one I had made a few years ago when I led a trip … Read more
I was reading an article in The New York Times today: “No Casual Fans At World Series of Baseball Trivia.” The article was about the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), which has a membership of 6,000 baseball geeks, and its annual convention. Midway in the article, in a discussion about the aging of its … Read more